


Of Love and Family

by Ferith12



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: All Thoughts No Action, BUT WAIT!, Brotherly Love, Familial Love, Gen, Rex is a Good Vod, There's one line of dialogue!, different kinds of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 01:53:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9526637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferith12/pseuds/Ferith12
Summary: Jedi don't have parents.Or Ahsoka Tano and finding love and family.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This belongs to an AU in my head, but aside from possibly some odd characterization the only difference from cannon featured in this story is that the war has been going on for two years before Ahsoka joins it.

  
[](https://outshinethestars.tumblr.com/)Jedi do not have parents.

Jedi do not have parents, they do not have family, but they have masters.

For as long as Ahsoka can remember she has known what to expect from her future.  She was found by Master Plo, and someday he will be her master.  In the meantime she stays in the creche.

  
Younglings in the creche do not have parents, but they do have Master Yoda.

Master Yoda’s love is deep and soft and gentle.  Master Yoda’s love is all encompassing and serene and as impersonal as love possibly can be.  Master Yoda’s love is not powerful or strong, but it is safe.

Love is not an emotion easy for Jedi to detect, because love is not, in fact, an emotion.  Love is also a choice, a commitment, a passion.  Love is not only something a being feels, it is a the she has and gives and creates and accepts.  It is part of a persons very being, the building blocks of his soul.

Love is not a thing easy for Jedi to detect, but Ahsoka has a knack for it.  Sometimes, if the love is strong enough, she can feel it behind even the most effective shields.

Plo Koon comes to the creche often.  He is fond of all the younglings and speaks with them all, but he is Ahsoka’s finder.  She belongs to him and with him and the love she feels from him shines in the way he speaks to her, in the subtle hints of his body language.

Plo Koon’s love is warm and rich and flowing.  Plo Koon’s love is a private thing, a clannish sort of thing, but it never, ever runs out.

(When Ahsoka was very young, the Chosen one came to the temple.  Perhaps, when Obi-Wan Kenobi came back shattered and grieving from his master’s death, with a young child to raise, perhaps Plo Koon would have volunteered to help, to take the boy as his own padawan, but he had just found a tiny Togruta child with eyes that were wide and blue and shining, and he needed to be free to train her when the time came.)

When Ahsoka is eleven when Master Plo asks her if she would like to become his padawan in a year, after she has finished up a few of her classes.  It was, of course, never truly a question to begin with.  Jedi do not have fathers, but Ahsoka has always known Master Plo would be hers some day.

When Ahsoka is twelve war breaks out and Master Plo goes off to fight in it.  “I’m sorry, little ‘Soka,” he says, “but I cannot take you as my padawan now.  A war is no place for he child.”  Ahsoka does not cry, because Jedi do not have family, nor do they mourn them.

Jedi do not have parents.

Jedi do not have family.

Ahsoka is thirteen when she finally understands this.

Ahsoka loves her creche mates and they love her in return, but… it is a shallow sort of love, a fondness for associates and fellow sentient beings, a loose camaraderie.  Ahsoka is lonely without the love of family.

Jedi do not have family but they have masters.  But the knights and masters are all far away and so many have died.  War is no place for children.

Ahsoka practices her forms, she learns to deflect and she learns to fight and she learns the dance of death.  She is eager to leave the creche, eager for adventure, eager to find a master.

Ahsoka is fourteen and according to the rules before the war, too old to become a padawan.  But these are desperate times, and Ahsoka is too skilled to be wasted in the corps.  They send her away to war.

Ahsoka has heard that Obi-Wan Kenobi is the perfect Jedi.  That he is wise and detached and serene.  This is not true.

Master Kenobi loves silently, intensely, unconditionally, selflessly.  And Master Kenobi’s love is pain.

Anakin Skywalker loves like a whirlwind.  Anakin Skywalker loves like lightning and thunder.  His love is self-sacrificial and utterly selfish.  His love is eternal and held only by a very few.  His love is like adrenaline.

He does not want a padawan.

Ahsoka tries to be good enough.  Perhaps she succeeds.  Anakin comes to love her with a love like explosives and chaos and power.  It is as thrilling as it is exhausting.

Meanwhile, Captain Rex gives her rare, knowing smiles.  He calls her Little’un, which should be more annoying than it is.  And he’s not afraid to tell her off when she needs it.

From the very moment she fell, unwelcome, into his life, his love for her is strong and steady and solid.  It is open and accepting and calm and violent.  It is so constant that she almost didn’t notice it was there at all at first.  But she holds on and returns it with all her own steady, chaotic love.

Ahsoka Tano is fourteen years old, Commander in the 501st legion, and padawan to Anakin Skywalker.  She has found a master, and she has found a family.


End file.
